Ethical Issues in Social Sciences Research

Farinaz Akhtarian

Department of English, Faculty of literature and Humanities,

Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran.

Abstract

Ethical tensions are part of the everyday practice of doing

research—all kinds of research .How do researchers deal with

ethical problems that arise in the practice of their research,

and are there conceptual frameworks that they can draw on to

assist them? This article at first focuses on the concept of

ethics and its guidelines then legal requirement of research and

the misconducts after express procedural ethics and ethics in

practice moreover offer some principles for good practice in

education and negotiation ethics in practice at last it explains

ethical problems of research plus some solutions to it.

Key words: Ethics guidelines, Research misconduct, Ethics in

practice, Ethical problems.

1.Introduction

1

Right and wrong are distinguished from our ethics and our

behavior is conducted to ensure proper relations with patients or

colleagues. There are ethical guidelines when doing a research,

particularly when it involves interaction with people as

participants in the research, co-researchers or observers to the

research. Most researches in the area of solography have impacts

on people. Thus, careful considerations are required to ensure

that resources are guided towards and methodological research

with social or scientific value shaving a favorable risk benefit

ratio. The rights of participants are respected during the

research. Even without human involvement in your research, there

will still be ethical obligations to consider (Dr.Thoirs,2011).

Researchers must consider ethical standards that have been

developed as a response to extensive violations of appropriate

ethical behavior: 1) There are prominent examples of violations

of ethics in research, leading to serious consequences for the

participating subjects, researchers and society;2)The ethical

issues must be considered for pursuing the evidence and using the

information gained from research. (Kar,2011).

1.1. What Is Ethics?

Most people think of ethics (morals) as rules that distinguish

between right and wrong. These include the Golden Rule ("Do unto

others as you would have them do unto you"), a code of

professionalconduct like the Hippocratic Oath ("First of all, do

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no harm"), a religious creed like the Ten Commandments ("Thou

Shalt not kill..."), or a wise aphorisms like the sayings of

Confucius. This is the most common way of defining "ethics":

Norms for conducting the distinction between acceptable and

unacceptable behavior.

Most people learn ethical norms at home, school, or in other

social places. Although most people acquire their sense of right

and wrong during childhood, but morals develop throughout life.

Ethical norms could be regarded as simple commonsense. If

morality were nothing more than commonsense, then why are there

so many ethical disputes and issues in our society?

One plausible explanation of these disagreements is that all

people recognize common ethical norms but different individuals

have different views about them.

Most societies have legal rules, but ethical norms have broader

aspects. Although most societies use laws to enforce widely

accepted moral standards .Ethical and legal rules use similar

concepts, but ethics and law are not the same. An action may be

legal but unethical or illegal but ethical. We can use ethical

principles to criticize, evaluate, propose, or interpret laws. In

the last century, many social reformers urged citizens to disobey

laws to protest what they regarded as unjust laws. Peaceful

disobedience is an ethical way of expressing political

viewpoints. (Davi,Resnik,1987).

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Ethics mean the rules for distinguishing right and wrong and

despite the fact that all these rules may hold good, as in Ten

Commandments, etc., there are more specific guidelines for

‘ethics in research’. The Declaration of Helsinki by the World

Medical Association is perhaps the most influential. It was first

published in 1964 and updated in 2008. There are many authorities

guarding ethical principles in research, including World Medical

Association, UK National Research Ethics Service, US Department

of Health and Human Services, etc. Committee on Publication

Ethics (COPE) is a “self-help” group for journal editors facing

ethical problems. It has over 6000 members working in all

disciplines. It advises on publication ethics to editors and

publishers, hears complaints from members of the public who

believe that a member has not followed its code of conduct. COPE

discusses cases, gives advice, and maintains follow-up

information. Other agencies having direct or indirect

considerations in research ethics are Food and Drug

Administration (FDA),National Institute of Health, etc. However,

funding/sponsoring organizations, institutional ethics

committees, individuals like Chief Investigators, Principal

Investigators are all heavily involved in maintaining ethical

standards of the research (Kar,2011).

1.2.Ethics guidelines

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National Statement on Ethical Conducting Human Research is one of

the key national documents in conducting research that is based

on integrity, respect, beneficence, and justice. National

Statement provides guidelines for researchers and research

ethical reviewers (e.g.: Human Research Ethics Committees). The

document outlines quality, safety and ethical acceptability for

institutions permitting research within their institution. Anyone

doing research is responsible for its ethical conduct and should

seek review and approval from an ethics review body or Human

Research Ethics Committee (HREC).

HREC accepts responsibility for the scientific and ethical

review, but this may sound rather daunting; there are many items

in the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research,

and the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.

HRECs provide guidelines for the ethical considerations that they

assess. The guidelines meet the requirements of the National

Statement on Ethical Conduct. If you are conducting research in a

hospital, needing access to their data, or the patients, you will

need to get approval from their HREC and sometimes you may need

more than one HREC. After approval and proceeding with a research

project, you may find that you need to make changes to the

protocol. Thus, you may need to seek advice or amendments from

the HREC(s). If your research is not aligned, you will have to

get approval from the body reviewing external research that may

incur a fee, accordingly.

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A list hospital or university based HRECs in Australia and the

ones run by public health departments is listed on the National

Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) website.The

committee managed by Bilberry Limitedas a national, private, not-

for-profit organization located in South Australia provides

scientific/ethical reviews for the Australian research

community(Thoirs,2011). This center controls research activities

at a local level to ensure participant safety and the integrity

of the research protocol. The researchers involved in

international multicenter research ensure that participants with

intellectual disabilities and their advocates have access to an

independent authority so that they can easily forwardquestions or

complaints about the project. This mechanism is to ensure that

complaints are conveyed to all ethics committees. Note: In some

countries or communities, a telephone contact alone may be

insufficient and personal follow-up by an independent authority

not involved with the research team is necessary. “Appropriate

standards of care” for participants with intellectual

disabilities should be established in consultation with those who

work where the research is to be conducted.

Any risks to participants with intellectual disabilities are

distributed between participants in all involved and any risk

should not exceed the provision of routine support or therapy,

medical or psychological treatments. For a project to proceed,

the ethics review committees/boards would need to find that:a)the

research is designed for the issues affecting the prospective

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participants; b) the risks of the research protocol are

comparable with those associated with routine support, medical or

psychological examinations; c) the objective of the research is

sufficiently important to justify exposure of the participants to

the increased risk; d) the research activities are commensurate

with support activities and/or clinical interventions that the

participants have experienced or may be expected to experience in

the course of their life; and e) safeguards are in place to

minimize consequences of risk. It might be appropriate to

compensate participants for their involvement in a project; for

instance compensation for travel expenses for inconvenience such

as time away from their usual work or activities, or for

incurring risk.

However, no inducements should be offered to participants and

compensation must not be coercive. Even small sums of money or

provisions of specialist services could be considered as major

inducement, especially in developing countries. Provision is made

for the secure storage, transport and exchange of documentation

and individual data. Prior to storage and/or transport, data is

identified. Only those directly involved in the research have

access to raw and identifiable data. International multicenter

research projects with participants with intellectual

disabilities could be provided to promote access by participants,

their advocates and local communities. This could include

conducting post-project information sessions, production of a

plain language summary of the findings, or briefings to local

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practitioners or community leaders. However, the cost of such

processes needs to be taken into account. Any potential benefits

to participants with intellectual disabilities are distributed

between participants in all jurisdictions involved in any

international, multicenter research project.

Ownership of personal information of individual participants who

reside with the individual contributing those data and that on

request of participants and/or with their consent, relevant

individual data will be available at the conclusion of a research

project to assist with the participants’ on-going support or

treatment. Research involving participants with intellectual

disabilities identifies the ethical standards applied in

conducting the research. In the documentation and publication of

any research findings, those involved in conducting research in a

host country on behalf of a principal researcher or international

sponsor be given appropriate acknowledgment for their

contribution to the project (Dalton and McVilly,1987).

2.Legal requirement in research

There are various legal issues during conducting research. One of

the major issues is mental capacity of the subject in giving

informed consent. Conducting research on subjects lacking

capacity, children, adolescents and patients who are legally

detained against their will is challenging. This needs integrated

and intensive debate during the ethics approval. It is of

8

importance that the researchers abide by relevant law in managing

patients, study subjects while conducting research. During

clinical trials, there are specific requirements; some examples

are as follows: The sponsor of a clinical trial should notify the

licensing authority in writing of any serious breach of the

conditions and principles of GCP or the protocol relating to that

trial within 7days of becoming aware of that breach. The “serious

breach” is a breach which is likely to affect to a significant

degree – the safety, physical or mental integrity of the subjects

of the trial; or the scientific value of the trial” ( Kar,2011).

2.1. Research Misconduct

Misconducts in research are major concerns as they impact on the

reliability of research data and conclusions. Scientific

misconduct is defined as ‘the violation of the standard codes of

scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific

research’. Research misconduct includes failure to follow

protocols in case of leading to unreasonable risk or harm to

humans, other vertebrates or the environment and facilitating of

misconduct in research by collusion in, or concealment of, such

actions by others. It does not include honest error or honest

differences in the design, execution, interpretation or judgment

in evaluating research methods or results, or misconduct

unrelated to the research process. People commit scientific

misconduct for various reasons namely, career pressure, publish

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or perish issues, funding, reputation, pressure on being the

first one to report, laziness, ease of fabrication.

There are serious implications of research misconduct for every

involved people or establishments. Firstly, the reliability of

the research becomes questionable. The results bring in false

information to science. Applicability of the findings based on

“life or death” in clinical decisions gets jeopardized and public

trust in the research enterprise gets shaken.

2.2. Types of research misconduct

US National Science Foundation defines three types of research

misconduct to be described: fabrication, falsification and

plagiarism. Fabrication is making up results or reporting them.

Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or

processes or changing/omitting data or results for the research

not to be accurately represented in the research record.

Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas without

giving appropriate credit. Citation plagiarism also known as

‘citation amnesia’, ‘disregard syndrome’ and ‘bibliographic

negligence’ is the prior discoverers. It is the most common type

of scientific misconduct. Through plagiarism discovery, credit

can be reassigned from the original discoverer to a better-known

researcher. This is known as the ‘Matthew effect’. One of the

published cases of plagiarism recently was that of Asim Kurjak.

Self-plagiarism or multiple publication of the same content with

10

different titles and/or in different journals, in a different

language is very common. It is referred to as’ salami’ i.e. many

identical slices by the medical journal editors (MJE).

Plagiarism is difficult to detect, especially if it occurs in

journals, but there are now software packages to pick up

plagiarism. Research misconduct also includes by conferring

authorship on those that have not made substantial contributions

to the research. Where someone other than the named author(s)

makes a major contribution, it is known as ghostwriting.

Misappropriation of data literally means stealing the work and

results of others and publishing as to make it appear the author

had performed all the work under which the data was obtained.

Suppression is the failure to publish significant findings due to

the adverse results to the interests of the researcher or his/her

sponsor(s). It is essential to maintain high ethical standards

that the negative findings are also made available to the public

and researchers (Kar,2011).

3. Dimensions of Ethics

There are at least two major dimensions of ethics in qualitative

research: (a) Procedural ethics, involved in seeking approval

from a relevant ethics committee to undertake researchers; and

(b) “ethics in practice” or the everyday ethical issues that

arise in doing of research. It could be another dimension, too as

research ethics as articulated in professional codes of ethics or

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conduct. Most professions and organizations have professional

codes of conduct (Bulmer, 1982; Coady& Bloch, 1996; Homan, 1991).

Despite the existence of these codes as essential components of

the constitution of professions and organizations, like other

analysts such as Mason (1996, p. 166), we ask about the relevance

of these codes for actual research practice. Hornsby-Smith (1993)

claimed that organizational codes of conduct are often too

restrictive, and there is a general move in many organizations

toward more general guidelines for ethical practice. Professional

ethical codes are not applicable and can serve only as general

guidelines. We focus in professional codes in guiding ethical

research practice on procedural ethics and “ethics in practice”

and the relationship between them. We begin by reflecting on the

impact that these different dimensions actually have on research.

3.1. Procedural Ethics

One of the early stages of the research is the completing the

application form for a research ethics committee. It is usually a

formality to do the research. Like many others, we answer the

questions on the ethics application form, even though they may be

irrelevant. We have learned to write our responses through the

language for the committee to understand, and free of jargon, and

we should reassure the committee about the competent researchers

who can be trusted. This involves explaining methodology to a

committee who may be unfamiliar with qualitative methods and may

be antagonistic toward this type of research. Moreover, we have

12

learned to gloss over some issues that may cause the committee

concern, such as a transcriber who is out of the research team to

access to interview without seeking direct consent from the

participants, or not to draw too much attention to potential

risks to the researchers when conducting the research.

The form asks what measures the researchers have in the event of

unexpected outcomes or adverse effects. As indicated, there are

many situations that are unexpected in the researches that can

have adverse consequences. Most researchers learn quickly that

they need to be savvy in addressing the potential issues of

concern of the committee: using the appropriate discourse to

ensure that applications will be approved as quickly as possible

with minimum changes and dispute while remaining true to their

research integrity (Guillemin and Gillam,2004).

3.2. Ethics in Practice

Consider the example of Sonia’s disclosure that her husband has

been sexually abusing her daughter. This is a classic ethical

dilemma of whether to breach Sonia’s confidentiality to prevent

harm to her daughter. This is not an ethical question that

receives much attention at the procedural ethics level, regarding

how confidentiality will be. This is not the only ethical issue

here and there are more immediate ethical concerns. The

researcher has to respond to Sonia's statement. Does the

researcher let the disclosure pass or take it up in some way?

13

Turn off the tape recorder or keep it running? Abandon the

interview plan or try to return to it? Offer to discuss or help

in some way? These are issues about the ethical obligations a

researcher has toward a research participant, while at the same

time being mindful of one’s role as a researcher. These issues

are not usually addressed in research ethics committee

applications, nor they are events that are often anticipated when

applying for approval.

Some cases are not ethical since they may not be “dilemmas”. It

is true that some of them are not dilemmas, if we consider them

for referring to a situation in which there is a choice between

different options having compelling ethical advantages and

disadvantages. Perhaps these issues are unimportant because they

have “everyday” sort of quality. Anyhow, there is much more to

ethics than red letter dilemmas. The questions about responding

to Sonia represent what we call “ethically important moments,”

where the approach has important ethical ramifications, but where

the researcher does not necessarily feel himself or herself to be

on the horns of a dilemma.

In some cases, it might be clear how the researcher should

respond, and yet there is still something ethically important at

stake. For example, it might be clear that the researcher should

not just continue with the interview as if nothing has happened

but instead, should respond directly to Sonia in some way. The

right thing to do does not make the situation ethically trivial;

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the moment of response is an important moment for there is the

possibility that a wrong could be done. There can be all sorts of

ethically important moments: when participants have discomfort

with their answer, or reveal a vulnerability; when a participant

does not want to be assigned a pseudonym in the writing up of the

research but wants to have his or her real name reported; or the

case described by Orb et al. (2001) of interviewing victims of

violence where the researcher has to decide how far to probe a

participant about a distressing experience. It is this dimension

of ethics in “ethically important moments” that is of primary

interest in this article. This ethical dimension of practice is

often apparent to researchers, but there is little work available

in this regard. We need a language to articulate and understand

these ethical issues and also an approach in that respect. We

will now go on to suggest a way into this “ethics in practice”

dimension and then consider how “ethics in practice” relates to

procedural ethics (Guillemin and Gillam,2004).

3.2.1. Principles For Good Practice in Education

1 .Encourages Contact Between Students and Faculty

Frequent contact in and out of classes is the most important

factor in student motivation and involvement. Faculty concern

helps students get through rough times and keep on working.

Knowing a few faculty members well enhances students’

intellectual commitment and encourages them to think about their

own values and future plans.

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2.Develops Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students

Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a

solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and

social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often

increases involvement in learning. Sharing one’s own ideas and

responding to others’ reactions sharpens thinking and deepens

understanding.

3. Encourages Active Learning

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much

just by sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing

prepackaged assignments, and giving answers. They must talk about

what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past

experiences and apply it to their daily lives. They must make

what they learn part of themselves.

4. Gives Prompt Feedback

Students need proper feedback on performance to benefit from

courses. At starting, students need help in assessing existing

knowledge and competence. Students need frequent opportunities

for improvement. At various points during college, and at the

end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned,

what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves.

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5 . Emphasizes Time on Task

Time plus energy equals learning. There is no substitute for time

on task. Learning to use the time well is critical for students

and professionals alike. Students need help in learning effective

time management. Allocating real time means effective learning

for students and effective teaching for faculty. Defines time

expectations for students, faculty, administrators, and other

professional staff can establish the basis for high performance

for all.

6. Communicates High Expectations

Expect more and you will get more. High expectations are

important for everyone, either poorly prepared or those unwilling

to exert themselves, or the bright and well-motivated people.

7. Respects Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning

There are many roads to learning. People bring different styles

of learning to college. Brilliant students in the seminar room

may be all thumbs in the lab or art studio. Students rich in

hands-on experience may not do so well with theory. Students need

the opportunity to show their talents and learn in proper ways.

Then they can be pushed to learning in new ways that do not come

so easily (Chickeringand Gamson,1987).

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3.3.Negotiating Ethics in Practice

Knowledge and Understandings of Ethical Practices

The growing importance in conducting ethical research has been

accompanied by a proliferation of guidance/policies on doing

ethical research (Bell, in press). In thinking through

participatory ethics, these guidelines offer important reference

points (Manzo and Brightbill, in press).

There are various guidelines, such as Morrow’s (2004) framework

for doing social research with children as well as the Glasgow

Centre for the Child and Society (undated) recently produced a

code of practice on research ethics (see Hopkins and Bell, in

press).

As well as official guidelines, local organizations/agencies have

guidelines to be used by particular groups. It is important for

researchers to be familiar with the different. Researchers are

also sensitive to ambiguities within the guidelines as well as

any contradictions in practices of practitioners and the best

practice examples of particular ethical codes. Knowledge of

ethics is important and researchers need to be sensitive to

varying contextual knowledge about appropriate ethic. This means

learning from others involved in research is ethical. In the

research about unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (Hopkins and

Hill, 2006), I found it important for the researchers to be

familiar with ethical and ‘best practice’ in particular fields

and the need to consider these with research participants

through the research process. By studying the guidance about

18

working with unaccompanied minors, I was aware that

interpretations were quite sensitive. Crawley (2004: 48) observes

that ‘interpreters should be skilled in interpreting for

children. Children should be asked if they want a male or female

390 interpreter’ (Crawley, 2004: 48). Also, Chester (2001: 165)

clarifies that: ‘it should not be assumed that because the

interpreter is from the same country as the child, they speak the

same language or dialect. The interpreter may come from another

ethnic, religious, cultural or political group that may hold

opposite views to the child’ (Chester, 2001: 165). Lynch and

Cunningham (2000: 386), alongside other researchers note that it

is inappropriate to use children as interpreters (Lynch and

Cunningham, 2000: 386). I was therefore aware of this, especially

when the children were being asked about sensitive and personal

information connected with their pre-flight experiences (see

Hopkins and Hill, in press).

However, when negotiating access with gatekeepers and interview

with unaccompanied minors in their care, some service providers

suggested that they could ask the children to interpret for each

other. This clearly contradicts existing guidelines, and hence I

conveyed this to the service providers and suggested that we used

the interpreters of Scottish Refugee Council. If I was not aware

of the existing guidance about interpreting, aside from the ways

in which interpreters actively shape research encounters

(Edwards, 1998), I could have taken up the suggestions of these

service providers, motivated by having gained access and an

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opportunity to hear about the views and experiences of another

child. This could have risked the well-being of the children

involved, possibly heightening their traumatic experiences,

causing distress and breaching principles of confidentiality.

This would clearly have been unethical (Hill, 2005). This example

showed the importance of familiarization of the researchers with

the various ethical guidelines in doing necessary actions with

regards to the people they do research with.

Different communities may have different conceptions of what

ethical research is, (Sanderson and Kindon, 2004) and proper care

should be taken about discussing such issues. Those involved in

participatory research could draw on the expertise of research

participants’ understandings of their own experiences to shape

the direction of research projects. Research about the ways in

which children can be regarded as experts in their own lives

(e.g. Morrow, in press) may provide useful examples for advancing

participatory ethics in this regard (Hopkins,1968).

4.The Ethical problems of research

One important source of trouble in clinical investigation is the

fundamental discrepancy between the clinical investigator and the

physician. One reads that’ medical experimentation takes place

continually in every doctor’s office', and that 'the therapy of

disease is an experimental aspect of medicine', but the practice

of medicine and the pursuit of a scientific problem are not

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equitable. The physician is primarily concerned with the

treatment of patients as quickly as possible with a minimum of

inconvenience, risk and cost to the patient. In the practice of

his art the doctor has to use any justified measures. He is

concerned with what works, not what contributes to science.

For the investigator, the primary emphasis is on the research

question. This does not mean that he should be careless; indeed,

patients in an experiment are likely to be more carefully

observed as research subjects. The patient is often better served

by the restraint observed by the critical experimentalist.

Exhibition of many therapeutic measures can be less desirable

than the wise use of a few well-chosen ones, and in controlled

trials, the placebo-treated patients turn out to be the lucky

ones, as the new 'remedy' proves to be toxic or therapeutically

ineffective. There remains an important difference in orientation

between the physician and the investigator. Take, for example,

the patient with metastatic cancer as a serious disease that we

lack good treatment. There would seem to be no ethical problem in

giving a new compound, which may do some good. The first cancer

patients who receive a testing drug often fail to obtain

significant therapeutic benefit, and those involved in such early

pharmacological trials are likely to entail a certain amount of

serious risk from the powerful poisons generally required to

treat malignant disease. In such a situation, therefore, the

physician might well say ‘No’ to the earliest trial of a new drug

21

in cases where the investigator might say 'Yes'

(Lasagna.1968 ,Hopkins,1987).

4.1.Standard & Its prioritization solutions to the Ethical

problems

The use of human embryonic stem cells in research raises

different ethical problems: Experiments on embryos for in vitro

fertilization but left unused, or embryos created for research

raise ethical questions. Firstly, using “spare” human embryos for

research means a lack of respect for the beginning of human life,

and secondly, creation of embryos for research indicates morally

worse state than experimentation on already created but unused

human embryos. Another raised question is whether it is moral to

create human embryos for therapeutic purposes. Anyhow, one may

ask about equally effective alternatives for research on viable

human embryos that could avoid or at least decrease these

problems.

The discovery of human embryonic stem cells has been one of the

most exciting developments in the biological sciences. The

medical community has become very interested in the applications

of stem cells in regenerative medicine with the applications

involving tissue engineering, genetic engineering, and other

techniques regarding failing tissues and organs. There is little

controversy about the application of adult stem cells, but human

embryonic stem cells have raised many ethical controversies.

These controversies are partly dependent on the source of

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embryonic stem cells. There are three currently used sources of

embryonic stem cells:

1.Already existing embryonic stem cell lines;

2. Embryos left unused after in vitro fertilization procedures

(the so-called “spare” embryos);

3. Embryos created by means of somatic cell nuclear transfer

technique (the same technique as for creating Dolly) for the

purpose of conducting research (Hug,2005).

Conclusion

There are many problems regarding expectations, processes for

gaining consent, risks of using information and the treatment of

human subjects as data rather than as moral agents. While

probably much of this is unintended, but in practice, ethical

inadequacies lead to the ill-treatment of extremely vulnerable

individuals and groups as a means to achieve research ends, which

breaches the basic principles of accepted research ethics.

Thus, guidance is needed in a range of areas, including

responsibilities of researchers and sponsoring institutions, the

complexities of achieving meaningful informed consent, the

representativeness of ‘community leaders’ facilitating research

on behalf of refugee and finally, ethical issues that arise in

the publication or dissemination of research findings. We suggest

that there is some common useful ground to consider. Although

procedural ethics is unable to guide all aspects of research

practice, it does serve a valuable function in forcing us to

23

consider the fundamental guiding principles that govern research

integrity. Furthermore, it acts as a practical reminder for us to

be mindful and active in protecting our research participants

(and ourselves) from harm and risks, and affording respect for

autonomy. In the cases conflicts in ethical considerations with

scientific quality, the researchers should give more weight to

the ethical requirements. Researchers alter their plans in order

to fulfil their ethical responsibilities. This involves them,

sometimes, not acquiring the data, which the research project

required.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to our supervisor Dr. Hadi Salehi for critical

comments and his encouragement to pursue this project.

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